Archive for October, 2008

“So long as we see the Word of God take flesh in the letter of Holy Writ in a variety of figures we have not yet spiritually seen the incorporeal and simple and singular and only Father as in the incorporeal and simple and singular and only Son. As the Scripture says, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father,” and also, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” It is, therefore, very necessary for a deep knowledge that we first study the veils of the statements regarding the Word and so behold with the naked mind the pure Word as he exists in himeslf, who clearly shows the Father in himself, as far as it is possible for men to grasp. Thus it is necessary that the one who seeks after God in a religious way never hold fast to the letter lest he mistakenly understand things said about God for God himself. In this case we unwisely are satisfied with the words of Scripture in place of the Word, and the Word slips out of the mind while we thought by holding on to his garments we could possess the incorporeal Word. In a similar way did the Egyptian woman lay hold not of Joseph but of his clothing, and the men of old who remained permanently in the beauty of visible things and mistakenly worshiped the creature instead of the Creator.”

The early Christians after the New Testament era believed that the Church was a visible hierarchical society instituted by Jesus Christ that persists through succession of apostolic authority. They also claimed to have received this teaching from Jesus Christ and the apostles. Orthodox, Roman, and Anglican (each of which claims to be Catholic—and I will call them such for the sake of argument) concur—the Church is indeed the visible hierarchical society instituted by Jesus Christ that endures through time by succession from the apostles. They each hold to the authority of tradition in some way and to some degree; so the fact that the apostolic fathers and their immediate descendants all agree about the definition of Church has a lot of weight in terms of what we must believe. Of course the good Catholic apologist will also hold that there are good reasons based on the teaching of the New Testament to believe this. And for some, those biblical arguments would be sufficient all by themselves.

In this post, I will not argue that the Catholic view is true. I will just explain what it is, what it implies, how it relates to the Protestant view, and what the structure of an argument for the Catholic view might look like.